Blood pressure drug taken by millions of Britons cuts the risk of dying from coronavirus by a THIRD, research shows

Experts found that Covid-19 patients who have been prescribed the medication were 33 per cent less likely to die or be admitted to intensive care.

The drugs – Angiotensin-Converting Enzyme (ACE) inhibitors and Angiotensin Receptor Blockers (ARBs) – are used to treat high blood pressure, heart attacks and diabetes.

More than six million people in the UK take them regularly, and the new study shows they can boost coronavirus survival chances in patients taking them for high blood pressure.

Researchers at the University of East Anglia pooled data from previous studies looking at 28,872 patients in hospital with Covid-19.

One quarter of the patients were taking ACE inhibitors or ARBs, including one third of patients with high blood pressure.

The study showed that patients with high blood pressure were 33 per cent less likely to die or be placed on a ventilator if they were taking ACE inhibitors.

More research is needed to see if the drugs could treat coronavirus in patients who do not have high blood pressure.

Experts said the findings are hugely reassuring for millions of patients on the medication.

It follows fears that ACE inhibitors may in fact worsen Covid-19 as they reduce blood pressure by increasing levels of ACE2 receptors on the surface of a patient’s cells.

Covid-19 uses the same receptor to lock on to cells and invade the body. Lead author Dr Vassilios Vassiliou suggested the drugs may reduce the risk of dying from Covid by keeping blood pressure under control and decreasing inflammation in the body.

He said: ‘We can now very conclusively say that if you are being prescribed this medication you should keep taking it and it will not increase death or critical events, in fact it could save your life.’

He added that ACE inhibitors and ARBs may also reduce the severity of coronavirus among patients who take the medication for other conditions, such as diabetes or kidney failure.

‘For patients who were taking the medication but did not have high blood pressure we could see a trend towards them having better outcomes but it didn’t reach statistical significance. We can say it was definitely not harmful.’

He added: ‘We have shown that patients who have been prescribed the medication before they got Covid are better off.

'We do not have any evidence that if somebody got Covid-19 today and you gave them the medication they might be better off.’

The most popular versions of the drugs are Ramipril, Losartan, Lisinopril and Candesartan, according to NHS data.

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Coronavirus: How fishermen landed a vital clue on Covid immunity

In May a fishing vessel headed out into Puget Sound, off Seattle, hoping for a good haul. When it returned, it brought back something far more valuable – an answer to the most important question facing the world.

On that ship, a study claims, was the first good evidence that being infected with coronavirus conferred immunity.

After setting off, one of the sailors came down with Covid-19. The vessel returned to port, where the health authorities discovered that 103 crewmates had also been infected.

Before sailing, all those on board had been screened, both for live infection and antibodies. Although this testing did not pick up the infected sailor, it picked up something else. Six tested seropositive, showing they could have had the infection. Of those, three had high levels of neutralising antibodies.

When the ship returned to dock, the authorities discovered that the three with a high level of antibodies were among the minority of 18 crew who had not been infected. It is possible that the other three, who did get infected, were false positives.

Among those who had not had it, more than 85 per cent were infected. Among those who almost certainly had, and had a strong reaction, none were.

By showing that a decent level of antibodies offers protection, the findings strongly suggest that the leading vaccine contenders will do as well.

“It would have been catastrophic for the world if we had not seen this,” said Alex Greninger, from the University of Washington, who published the research before peer review in Medrxiv.

The presence of neutralising antibodies has been one of the targets of vaccine trials. “It is a big deal to show if those antibodies are protective,” he said.

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Kamala Harris Is a Fraud

Joe Biden's new running mate is neither a truth-teller nor a moderate.

If first impressions were serious ones, Kamala Harris might already be in trouble. In her first speech as Joe Biden’s running mate, she came out of the gate with a reckless disregard for the truth – which tells us that Biden’s influence must already be rubbing off. (When he was younger and far more nimble, he managed to tell four fully formed lies in the space of just 124 words.)

“The president’s mismanagement of the pandemic,” Harris railed earlier this week, “has plunged us into the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression.”

“False,” replied National Review’s Kyle Smith. “The pandemic and its associated lockdowns, not the president, are responsible for the economic contraction. … And it’s questionable to compare the current crisis to the Great Depression, which was not only deep but lasted more than a decade.” (Thanks to FDR’s policies, we’d add.)

As for those lockdowns, The Wall Street Journal editorial board saw through the Democrats’ scheme more than two months ago. “The state lockdowns are starting to ease and the U.S. economy should slowly begin to recover,” the editors wrote. “But it’s worth noting that the states opening most slowly are big states run by Democrats that represent something like a third of the U.S. economy. This means a slower recovery for those states and the U.S.”

Next, Harris blamed the Trump administration for our shuttered schools. “Just look where [Trump and Mike Pence] have gotten us,” she complained. “Millions of kids who cannot go back to school.”

Wrong again, Smith rightly said. “It is not Donald Trump’s decision whether kids go back to school, because the federal government does not run schools, but he has urged the schools to reopen. The primary reason kids cannot go back to school is opposition from teachers’ unions.”

We all know this to be true — that the teachers’ unions are adamantly against reopening — and for purely partisan political purposes. And here again, the Journal called them out: “The reopening of public schools poses an economic conundrum: If the schools aren’t open, many parents will lack child care and be unable to return to work. If parents can’t work, the economy can’t recover. Teachers unions are thus in a position to hold the economy hostage.”

Having thus attempted to hang the school closings on President Trump, Harris did further violence to her credibility with this ridiculous comparison: “Six years ago, in fact, we had a different health crisis. It was called Ebola. We all remember that pandemic.”

Huh? Since when does a handful of Ebola cases constitute a “pandemic”? According to the CDC, only 11 people in the entire U.S. were treated for Ebola during Harris’s imaginary pandemic.

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Trump Considers a Cut in the Capital Gains Tax

President Donald Trump has suggested cutting the capital gains tax as part of the economic recovery from COVID-19. And indeed, cutting capital gains taxes could help spur new businesses, increase the availability of funds for existing businesses, and encourage innovation and entrepreneurship.

Reducing taxes on capital gains also could be a good thing for the recovery from the pandemic, but doing it right will be important.

Without decisive spending cuts, the threat of future tax increases will erode the benefits of near-term tax cuts and other policy options may be better suited to support the recovery.

When you sell an investment, such as a share of a company, the government charges a capital gains tax on the increased value. The top long-term capital gains rate currently is 23.8%, with lower rates for lower income levels.

Investment income is taxed twice: once when you earn it as wages, and a second time on any investment earnings. If your money is invested in a corporation, the corporate income tax takes another slice of your investment.

This system makes it more expensive to invest in the future and encourages Americans instead to spend their money today, which reduces overall levels of investment and economic growth.

Our tax code’s built-in bias against saving for the future is partially mitigated by having a lower tax rate on capital gains and dividends than the top income tax rate of 37%. The lower rate is a necessary, pro-growth feature of our tax code. A key promise of Democrats is to tax capital gains as ordinary income, raising the tax significantly. 

Because the capital gains tax is assessed at the time of realization–when the asset is sold–it creates an incentive to hold the asset to defer paying taxes. This has the side effect of encouraging investors to hold appreciated assets longer than they otherwise would for fear of having to pay tax on the gain, creating a “lock in” effect.

This “lock in” has real economic costs when investors hold assets due to fear of taxes rather than belief in a smart investment choice.

These “malinvestments” mean that Grandma still might be holding onto that $100 of Disney stock she bought in 1957 when the company went public. Her investment is now worth over $300,000 and if she cashed out, she could owe more than $70,000 in taxes.

Maybe her dollars might be invested better in her granddaughter’s small business. Or perhaps a different publicly traded company.

Lock in and double taxation mean that high capital gains taxes reduce companies’ ability to raise funds for new investments through equity offerings. They also impose higher taxes on riskier investments, such as startups that run large losses in the initial years with a small probability of successfully making a profit in the future.

Freeing up domestic capital and reducing the tax penalty for entrepreneurs have the potential to be particularly helpful as the economy retools after this current crisis. 

The current high capital gains rate actually could be costing us revenue. The anti-realization incentives of the tax are so strong that under conservative estimates from Congress’ Joint Committee on Taxation, the revenue- maximizing tax rate is 28.5%.

When factoring in state taxes, the total capital gains tax rate in states such as California and New York is over 30%, and in 2016, the U.S. average cumulative capital gains rate was 28.9%. Investors are so sensitive that high capital gains tax rates lead to lower revenues simply through investors’ behavioral responses.

The revenue-maximizing rate should not be confused for any measure of economic efficiency. Ideally, the tax rate on capital income should be zero. Anything above zero unnecessarily reduces jobs and productivity growth. This harms not just the investors but workers and consumers too.

The capital gains tax also applies to inflationary gains. Inflation isn’t a big deal for the investor who has seen high returns. In our Disney example, less than $1,000 of the $300,000 gain is inflation. But most investments don’t have such great returns.

Poorer-performing investments can be swamped by inflation. In some cases, the effective capital gains rate can be more than 100% during times of high inflation on low return assets. The Tax Foundation estimates that about a third of unrealized household gains are inflationary.

To this aim, Trump previously has talked about the need to index capital gains to inflation so that the tax system stops taxing these phantom gains. Indexing capital gains would increase fairness and could unlock meaningful new domestic investment resources.

Indexing capital gains should be done carefully through the legislative process, since the Constitution empowers only Congress to enact new tax policy. The Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel agrees “that Treasury does not have legal authority to index capital gains for inflation by means of regulation.”

Leaving new legislation to Congress is not only what the Founders envisioned but also has the economic benefit of being more permanent, which is essential to gaining the full benefit of any tax policy.

Congress may want to index other parts of the tax code to avoid opportunities for gaming and ensure administrative simplicity. This requires careful deliberation.

Congress also must weigh the economic benefits of different kinds of tax cuts. Reforms such as expensing and corporate income tax cuts can provide larger economic gains per dollar of reduced revenue.

A capital gains tax cut or indexing also will have little long-run effect if Congress does not also pair the reform with significant spending cuts.

Projected annual deficits of $2 trillion over the next decade will force Congress to cut spending, increase taxes, or risk fiscal collapse. Without decisive spending cuts, any tax cut is destined to be temporary.

Reducing taxes on capital gains could be a good thing. But without spending reforms, the necessity of higher taxes in the future likely will blunt the impact of otherwise good tax policy.

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For more blog postings from me, see  TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, GREENIE WATCH,  POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS, and Paralipomena (Occasionally updated), A Coral reef compendium and an IQ compendium. (Both updated as news items come in).  GUN WATCH is now mainly put together by Dean Weingarten. I also put up occasional updates on my Personal blog and each day I gather together my most substantial current writings on THE PSYCHOLOGIST.

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